Picnic Part Two - Kalamata Olives

Part two of the Music Mondays Picnic blog posts!!!

About the Food: Kalamata olives are named after the city of Kalamata in Messenia, southern Greece, where they are grown. Kalamata Olives are said to have a smooth and meat-like taste.

Review: I give Kalamata Olives a 2 out of 5 rating. 

Oh how I love black olives and I thought these would taste similar and they slightly did but not enough for me to like them. The flavor was bitter and just bad... I will not be eating these again. 

Picnic Part One - Iberico Cheese and Prosciutto

Picnic post! I went to Music Mondays the other night at Millennium Park and enjoyed some wonderful music and a delicious picnic! Though I tried too many foods for just one post so... here is part one!

Part one's foods are Iberico Cheese and Prosciutto! 

About: Iberico is a blend of cows' and sheep's milk creating a soft cheese with a smooth flavor. Prosciutto is a type of ham made in Italy and it's name means dried of liquid in Latin.

Review: I give Iberico Cheese and Prosciutto a 5 out of 5

Being from Wisconsin I love cheese and who doesn't love bacon? Iberico Cheese and Prosciutto are the "more sophisticated" counter parts. And while I loved the two of these foods separately you put them together and YUM! The smooth yet sharp flavor of the Iberico combined with the sweet and smokey flavor or the Prosciutto made a party in my mouth! 

Tapas - Cafe Ba Ba Reeba

Tapas, Topless, Tapas! What a great invention! ;) And while all of the Tapas dishes I had I have ate before I have never had the Tapas dinning style experience, thus this wonderful blog post!

About the Food:
Tapas is the name for the spanish style of dinning where the meal consists of a bunch of small dishes/appetizers called Tapas. Tapas were designed to encourage communication between the people at the table, the small dishes are meant to to distract people from traditionally focusing on one giant meal/plate and to encourage everyone to talk between each Tapa or plate.

Review of the Food: I give Tapas a 5 out of 5

Tapas were amazing! I often find myself sitting down for a meal and eating half of it, get sick of it and skill being hungry; I call this food A.D.D. ;) Tapas is the perfect dining experience for someone like me! Being able to eat small portions of a bunch of different foods was amazing! Not to mention all of the foods we ordered were delicious! 

Of the many Tapas we ordered my favorites were the cheese plate, the dark chocolate desert and the meat pastry, YUM! I can not wait to go back!

Restaurant Review: Ba Ba Reeba I give it a 5 out of 5!
Was this place cute or what!? Ba Ba Reeba had a very nice "comfy" atmosphere. The lighting was a soft yellow and the decorations were all brown and maroon and they had fun "christmas" type lights everywhere; it was just very... nice!

And as good as the atmosphere was, the service was just as good. We did have quite a long wait to get seated but we were able to go sit at their bar and have some sangria. When we got to our table the waiter took our order quickly and the food came out soon after.

I would not only recommend Tapas to everyone but I would also highly recommend going to Cafe Ba Ba Reeba to get them!

400 Pound Monkey

So I know it has been a while since I have written a post, my first Chicago summer has been quite busy. Though my summer has been fun I am back and have been drinking lots of new beers; a good and a bad thing... ;) 

The featured beer of the day is: 

About the Beer: 

400 Pound Monkey is brewed by Left Hand Brewing Company and is an English style India pale ale. Left Hand Brewing describes the beer as “a beer with hops of a different color, earthy and herbal, well balanced by bready malt. The result? An English-style IPA that separates itself from the ubiquitous bunch. Cartloads of bitter monkeys flinging wasteful amounts of bananas into the jungle . . .we're so done with that.” (Love the humor!) 

Review of the Beer: 4 out of 5

I must say I did love this beer! It seems as though my taste buds are maturing from only liking Miller Lite... Now I have been told that like a book you should never judge a beer by its cover/color, though I feel that the orange/amber color of the beer translated the taste of this beer quite well. The smell of the beer was of light hops, grain and some type of acidic fruit, possibly grape fruit.

As the color translated well so did the smell. The taste was of light hops, a sight acidic flavor and underlying tone of sweetness sort of balancing it all out. I feel that the beer is more a fall beer and I can’t wait until it cools down to drink up!  

A last little tid bit I want to say is that while I liked the flavor of the beer my favorite part of this beer was its label... AMAZING graphic design! (I am quite the graphics dork.) But seriously I see myself buying this beer again and really enjoying it come fall when it is not 2000 degrees outside! 

Keep cool foodies! 

Turkey Burgers

WARNING!!!! Big knifes are sharp! OUCH!!! Yes I learned a very valuable cooking lesson while preparing the food for this blog post: don't try to separate frozen burger with a big, sharp knife! DEFROST! 

Well a late night trip to the ER, a few months of recovery and the knowledge of how to defrost things I am attempted to make turkey burgers and this time I didn't cut myself and made some pretty good turkey burgers! 


About the Food: via cheese-burger.net
Turkey burgers were first discovered by health conscience diners in the seventies when it became known that substituting ground turkey breast for ground beef sheds about 200 calories, 25 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat and 45 milligrams of cholesterol from each quarter pound burger. 

Food Review: 3.5 our of 5
I decided to try turkey burgers because of well... what the about the food said, shedding 200 calories from a meal sounds amazing to me! I had tried turkey sausage and loved it so I assumed that I would like turkey burgers just as much. They were ok...


It might have just been the brand I bought but they were very bland... I will have to look into other brands to see if they are any better. As far as the turkey burger I made, adding condiments, some whole wheat bread and some veggies to the burger made it "not bad"; worth enduring for the the 200 calorie shed when craving a burger! 


Please let me know if any of you know a good turkey burger brand or if you have a good turkey burger recipe!! :D


UPDATE: Duh Duh Duuuhhh I have a found that I was right not to judge Turkey Burgers by the ones I first ate. Since my first traumatic experience with Turkey Burgers I have tried various brands and ordered them at various restaurants and have found: they are pretty tasty! 

Corned Beef and Cabbage

So this post is a little late but Happy St.Patty’s Day!  This also might be a little late (living the past 22 years and never eating this) but I had my first corned beef and cabbage this past St.Patty’s day! My roommate and I made a huge meal including mash potatoes, corned beef and cabbage.

History of the Food/Tradition: Via thekitchenproject.com

Corned Beef and Cabbage is basically an American tradition on St. Patrick's 
Day started by Irish-Americans in the mid 1800's

Some Irish people feel that corned beef and cabbage is about as Irish as spaghetti and meatballs. 

Since cows were used for milk rather than meat in poor times in Ireland, beef was a delicacy that was fed to kings. It was more common to celebrate a holiday meal with what they call a ham (Gammon) or bacon joint. (a cured but un-smoked piece of pork) with their cabbage and potatoes. When many Irish Immigrants came over in the mid 1800’s they couldn’t find a bacon joint like they had in Ireland, so they found that Jewish corned beef was very similar in texture, and they used that for their holiday celebrations.

Review of the Food: I give corned beef and cabbage a 5 out of 5 rating!

Yum, yum, yum, yum!!! I am so upset that this was the first year I had this oh so delicious meal! This takes meat and potatoes to a whole other level! To be honest the only reservations I had with this meal was that, when my roommate was making it, Guinness was added, in my opinion the worst tasting beer on the planet. But in the end (after hours of cooking) you couldn’t even taste it!

The cabbage on the other hand I had many reservations about. I really had never had cooked cabbage and was a little worried, but oh my goodness was it good. I don’t know all that my roommate put in it but bacon was involved and man was it good! I only wish this meal could be made more than just one day of the year because damn was it good! 

I recommend this meal to everyone!! It has officially been added to my St.Patty’s day traditions of green beer and beads! 

Seaweed Salad

Well ever since I went out for Sushi for the first time I have been craving it! So needless to say I have been eating it a lot! This is only a problem because I vowed to myself that I would only go out to eat and spend money if I was spending it on something that I had never tried before. So the last time I went out for Sushi I decided to try something new, Seaweed Salad.

A little about the food:

Seaweed Salad is actually a very simple dish. All it is, is seaweed, dried red chili flakes, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame, salt and your choice of sweetener.

Seaweed salad is not only easy to make, it is also actually very good for you! It is full of iron and minerals and is known to be good for balancing body metabolism and helps improve blood circulation.

Food Review: I give seaweed salad a 2 out of 5

While it didn’t taste bad, it, well, didn’t really taste at all. The texture was… interesting and while the flavors they added to the seaweed were okay it didn’t make up for the lack of flavor in the seaweed.

And while seaweed is very good for you I will not be adding it to my diet any day soon! It did not fill be up what so ever and it only made me more hungry for the delicious sushi that was coming my way. Not to mention red chili flakes, no thanks!

I’d say if you have a chance to try it for free, please do. Otherwise it’s not worth the money or the weight loss. 

Sprecher Hefe Weiss - iO Chicago Theater

My first beer blog post! I feel like I really need to try more beers so I can write more beer blog posts. There are so many MicroBrewery beers out there I could write a whole blog about them, so I will take it one beer at a time. 


My first beer is Sprecher Hefe Weiss. Sprecher describes it as a coarse-filtered wheat ale that is fermented with a German yeast culture for a refreshingly light spiciness and hints of citrus fruit. A cloudy appearance and an immense creamy head are characteristic of this lightly hopped Bavarian Brew.

Food Review: I give Sprecher Hefe Weiss a 3 out of 5 rating.

To be honest I will not be ordering this beer again. It was not the worst beer I have had by far but with there being so many beers out there, one really has to stand out for me to re-order it and this one did not. The flavor of this beer was light with a little spice to it. (I really need to learn how to describe how beer tastes better) I don't know that I would recommend this to people but I am glad I tried it and would like to try more of the Sprecher brews. 

Restaurant Review: iO Chicago Theater I give it a 4.5 out of 5

I very much enjoyed my time at the iO Chicago Theater. The theater itself actually has two stages in it and usually has two shows going on at a time. Each of the stages/rooms are not very big, which I really enjoyed! We got to sit really close to the stage even though we came in one minute before the show started and the intimacy was very nice. (Oh man I hate being late!)

The improv groups we saw were very funny and my only complaint is that they were not rude enough! I know this may sound weird but I like it when you go to places like this and the comedian yells at/makes fun of people in the audience if they, say are texting or get up to use the restroom in the middle of the show it just makes it more fun. That is the only reason I gave it a 4.5 out 5. But that is more to do with improve group than the actual theater. So iO I take it back you get a 5 out of 5! 

As far as pricing it was only $14 a person to get in on a Saturday night, which if you ask me is a steal! And let me say, I am already planning my next visit! Though I will try a different beer next time! ;)

Thanks for reading and please leave a comment if you have a favorite beer you would like me to try or if you have a favorite comedy spot you would like me to visit! 

Gyros

Another food I never gave a chance and another food that, when I think about it there is no reason I wouldn't like it! Meat, veggies and bread of course I would like it! I don't know why it took me so long to try it!

About the food: (Via whatscookingamerica.net)

This type of sandwich has been known, and sold on the streets, by the people of Greece, the Middle East, and Turkey for hundreds of years. Greek historians believe that the dish originated during Alexander The Great’s time, when his soldiers used their long knives to skewer meat and kept turning the meat over fires.

Pronunciation:

Gryo has always been one of those words that you hear pronounced about a million different ways. I found this video that says this is the "proper American-English" pronunciation but who knows! 

Food Review:

I give Gyros a 4 out of 5 rating. 

Yum yum yum! That is about all I have to say about Gyro! The meat was not dry what so ever, though I always thought it would be, and the shell everything was held in was soft and not stale in the least! YUM!

I must admit this is not the first time I have had a Gyro. In college my roommate let me try a bite of hers and to be honest, I didn't like it. Here is why I think I didn't like that one and did like the one in the picture above: Cucumber Sauce. 

The Gyro my roommate let me try had cucumber sauce on it and the one in the picture above had sour cream on it. I must admit I hated the cucumber sauce but the sour cream was amazing! 

As always let me know if you have a favorite Gyro restaurant in the Chicago Land area or if there is another sauce you think I should try on my new treat!

Sushi Rolls - Ukai

As I had stated in my first post it's not like I never had the chance to eat Sushi I just was very scared by the idea. I always would just get Tempura instead and the one time my friend let me try a maki roll I almost puked! That was quite a while ago however I felt it was time to give Sushi another chance. 

My roommate has been trying to get me to go get Sushi with her ever since I moved in and we finally got the chance a few days ago.

A little History (Via sushifaq.com)

Sushi, the artful dining experience once uniquely Japanese, has now evolved to another level beyond the traditional Japanese methods. Western influences have given rise to new styles of sushi, such as California rolls and the many elaborate ‘fusion’ creations at upscale sushi restaurants. The history of sushi is a long one, at least 1,800 years in fact, but the current iteration is popular around the world, and rightly so. It is not often that something so singly cultural can not only take the world by storm, but also influence the direction of food in other cultures. Demand for sushi is only increasing and seems to be continuing to evolve. Traditional sushi restaurants sit alongside ‘fusion’ restaurants and both are popular for their own reasons. The history of sushi is still far from over.

Review of the Food: I give Sushi a 5 out of 5 rating!

While I haven't had a lot of different kinds of Sushi Rolls the ones I had were amazing! We got ones that had avocado, cream cheese, shrimp, rice and tempura among other things in them. They did not taste at all like I had thought and while I usually don't like avocado it actually tasted really good in the rolls. 

And while looking at the menu trying to figure out what I would like I came across this ice cream desert: Tempura Tea Ice Cream. And now when I say I liked the Sushi Rolls I LOVED this desert! The creaminess of the ice cream combined with the flavor of the tea and the crunch of the tempura made a desert that I find myself craving ever since! 

Restaurant Review:

I give Ukai a 4 out of 5 Stars.

Ukai is a cute little Sushi bar where the service is good, the atmosphere is good and the food was good. (You think it was good? lol)They forgot my desert order but things happen. I think the most surprising thing for me was that the place was BYOB. Where I come from, Madison, WI, we don't have BYOB places (well not that I know of) and I didn't even know they existed. I was pretty fun to bring in your own wine and just have a good time.

Overall I had a good Sushi experience and I can't wait until I can go again and try more kinds! Please follow, rate and let me know if you have a favorite Sushi place in Chicago that I can try!

Ginger Ale

Now I am sure that just about every person you know has had Ginger Ale. Something your mom gave you when you were sick, not something that someone would be afraid to try... right? Well until yesterday I had never had Ginger Ale, and to be honest was a little scared to try it.

I had always thought it would taste gross (I had raw ginger on a cruise to ease my motion sickness and almost puked; nasty!). Then I got sick a few days ago and my roommate told me to get some Ginger Ale; that it would make me feel better; so going with my resolution to try new things, I did. 

A wonderful photo of a sad, sick me. :(

About the Drink: Although many believe ginger to be a root it is actually an underground stem (rhizome) from the tropical herb plant Zingiber officinale that is primarily grown in Jamaica. Ginger was first made into a drink in Ireland in 1851 and was used in local drug stores to make sodas by mixing it with fruit juices. As far as why mom always gave you ginger ale when you were feeling sick there is more to it than an old wives tale. Other than the bubbles feeling good on your throat it relieves menstrual cramps, decreases headache discomforts, helps to regulate blood sugar, is an anti-inflammatory and an antioxidant, which aid to strengthen the immune system. 

Food Review: I give Ginger Ale a 5 out of 5 rating. 

As stated before I was a little unsure about this bubbly drink. Ginger by itself is not the tastiest of things and I thought the drink would taste just like it. However as I cringed and put the glass to my mouth I was pleasantly surprised. It tasted just like Sprite! 

Being sick I decided to drink the Ginger Ale like I do Sprite when I am sick: with Orange Juice! Sounds weird but trust me it is so good! Tastes like a non-alcholic mimosa! YUM!

Well I have to thank my roommate for getting me to try my new go to sick drink, Ginger Ale! Also let me know if there are any other drinks you like to mix ginger ale with or any other recipes! 

Falafel - Alhambra Palace

Ever since moving to Chicago I have seen falafel restaurants and heard raving reviews of this food I had never tried or heard of. Well last night my friends and I went salsa dancing at Alhambra Palace Restaurant and before we started dancing we ordered some food; and yep I ate my first falafel! 


About the Food:
Falafel is a fried ball or patty of spiced field beans or chickpeas, dating back to Biblical times and originating somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. Falafel is today eaten in India as well as in Pakistan and the Middle East and is traditionally served with a yoghurt sauce, as a sandwich in pita bread, or as an appetizer.


Food Review:
I give falafel a 4 out of 5 rating. 

When I heard that falafel was made from chick peas I was expecting some green ball of peas to come out. However when the waitress brought out the food I was very surprised at what I saw; and I was even happier when I took a bite. The crispy outer shell and the soft insides made a delicious treat and while I hate peas this did not taste at all like them. The flavor was a mixture of fried bread and just the right amount of spices (don't worry it's not hot spicy!). I would recommend them to even the pickiest of eaters!   

Restaurant Review:

I give Alhambra 3 out of 5 stars. 

The Good: The best part of the restaurant is the decor. The restaurant is not only decorated like a Moroccan palace but also architecturally modeled after one inside and out. 

As far as the food as stated before I obviously liked it! I did however only try an appetizer so I will have to try some more food to give it a better review. Another great thing about Alhambra, for you Four Square people, is that if you are the major of the place on Four Square (like I am) you get a free appetizer with each entrée purchase. 

The Bad: While it was not the worst service I had ever had it was not the best. Now this might be petty I am someone who believes that restaurants should never refuse people a glass of water. And while our waitress was overall pretty good, when we first asked for a glass of water she tried to sell us bottles of water for $4 (a little pricey is you ask me)!!! Then when a man sat down next to us, flirted with the waitress and asked for a glass of water she gladly gave him one for free... Well I wasn't just going to sit there thirsty and when we asked again for one, after a long lecture of how she is not supposed to give us water, blah blah blah, she finally caved and gave us water (success!). 

If you have ever been to Alhambra or know of a great place to get Falafel in the Chicago area please leave a comment below! 

Introduction - Crazy Food Night

I grew up in a house hold were we had meat and potatoes for just about every meal. Nothing was ever spicy, exotic or foreign. I mean when we ordered Chinese food we got sweet and sour chicken... not really pushing any borders here.

As I got older and started going out to eat with friends I watched them order these crazy things that at the time I would never would have tried, and I didn't. We would go out for sushi and I would get tempura, go to a hibachi grill and I would only eat the meat and rice... something had to chance.

Last night my friends and I went salsa dancing at this Moroccan restaurant and ordered some appetizers. While looking at the menu I realized I had NO idea what anything was and was a little scared to order. I let me friend order and lets just say the old me would have never tried the things she ordered but I ended up loving them!

At that point I made a pack with myself and my friend to try a new "weird looking" food every time I go out to eat. That and to open up my drink selection too, by trying a different drink every time as well.

We decided that we were going to set one night a week called "Crazy food night" and she was going to take me to a place that I have never been to and help be open my food horizons!

This blog is my documentation of everything I try! I will not only write about the food and drink I try but also do a little review of every restaurant I go to.  I hope you enjoy; bon appetit!